Things Starting to Take Shape

It has certainly been a very wet last little while here. It seems like we have been getting atleast two inches of rain each week for the last month or so. As a result the course has definitely been a little wet as of late. Things are finally starting to dry up this week and this trend will hopefully continue. On a positive note though, it has been almost a month since we have had to put out an irrigation cycle during the night. This is obviously saving our water and power for the year. 

14 fairway after a big rain

This year we are painting the lip of the hole pink on certain days. We will be doing this every Wednesday for Ladies Nights and for any ladies tournaments. I unveiled this surprise at the end of May for the ladies. 

Pink paint on the edge of the hole

New for this year, we will now be placing bunker rakes on rental carts and those of you with private carts are to pick up a rake before the beginning of your round. There will be no rakes out on the course. We are doing this to mainly reduce on maintenance time. Our rough mower spent around six hours a week moving the rakes out of his way so that he could cut without running over rakes. Also every time we raked bunkers the rakes would also be in the way. This will also reduce the amount of damaged rakes from being ran over and will be more aesthetically pleasing to not see all the rakes.

Rakes on the back of the carts

We also performed an aggressive verticut and topdress last week. We did this to mainly help the greens recover from our take-all patch disease outbreak that we had early in May. Our greens are a creeping bentgrass (Agrostsis stolonifera) type of grass. This type of grass has an above ground root system known as stolons. When we verticut we cut these stolons which in turn creates a new growth point at the locations where the root was cut. This will then help the plant spread and help to fill in the areas that were affected by the disease. Verticutting also aids in removing thatch (dead decaying plant matter), which can negatively affect the plant root depth, ability to take in water, and create a very spongy putting service. It can also help to control "grain" which will in turn improve the playability and roll of the greens.

We followed our verticut up with a topdressing of sand. This helps to protect the plant, smooth out the surface where we verticut, replace any sand we may have removed from verticutting, and to speed up the greens. Finally we put out an application of fertilizer right after to provide the plant with nutrition and a flush of growth to help the plants to grow and spread quickly to fill in the areas of disease. We then watered all of this in the push the sand and fertilizer down into the canopy of the greens. 

Watering in the sand and fertilizer

So far I am quite pleased with how the greens are recovering from all this. The greens are beginning to look much better in this past week and we will be continuing to aid them in their recovery process.

Disease area recovering nicely